Is your website working?

This is more than is it working from an operational standpoint. The question is: Does your website achieve the goals you're trying to accomplish?

Those goals could include:

• Are users finding the information they're looking for?
• Where do they click?
• What pages do they visit?
• Are they clicking on the calls to action?

There are ways to answer those questions and others pertaining to your website's functionality and its ease of use by the user.

To find those answers, make sure you have a Google Analytics account attached to your website. You can set that up here.

Once you have that set up, there is a world of knowledge for you that'll help you get answers to the aforementioned questions above.

In this tutorial, I'm going to focus on the Universal Analytics, or UA or GA-3, dashboard.

Understanding the Google Analytics dashboard

This is the "home page" for your Google Analytics. It's the hub to where you'll find your information. You can view various reports in the left-hand column (see image below).

• Realtime is just that. What is the user activity on your website at that particular moment, in real time.
• Audience is a breakdown of demographics and psychographics. Data available here includes interest, geography, technology used.
• Acquisition shows how did users get to your site, such as social media.
• Behavior shows the activity of a user on your site, such as what web pages did they go to.
• Conversions shows a breakdown of goals you can set to measure your key performance indicators, such as signing up for a newsletter. (More on this is a separate blog)

What is a Behavior Flow chart?

Just like the name says, it's a flow chart of user activity on a website. It looks at the pages visited through a website journey. There are several data points you can measure such as landing page, source/medium, campaign, social network and many more.

You can find the behavior flow chart under "Behavior" on the left-hand column of your dashboard as seen below.

Diving deeper in the analytics

Now you know where to find data. How do you use it? What data can help you evaluate your website?

If you're looking to understand your website data, ask yourself: What am I trying to find out? If it's how people are getting to your site, you'll want to focus on acquisition. If you want to know a user's journey on your site, you'll want to focus on behavior.

Let's take a look at how to learn more about a user's journey on your website.

Understanding site content data

Under site content data, you'll find the following options: all pages, content drilldown,

landing pages and exit pages.

All pages will give you a full list of all URLs on the site. You can toggle this to by page title for easier organization.

Content drilldown is similar, but it's big difference is you can set it to start with a directory or page.

Landing pages is just that, the landing page. Same thing for exit page.

What you'll notice amongst this data are statistics called bounce rate and exit rate.

The bounce rate is the rate of which users leave the site without navigating to any other page. The exit rate is the rate of which users leave a the site after navigating at least one other previous page. Here you'll learn what pages users start on your website and where you're losing them.

Something to keep in mind. If you're bounce rate is within 35-60%, that's OK. It's outside of those numbers that attention should be paid. Same goes with exit rate. These numbers only offer a scratch of the surface insight. A review of other goals, such as the call-to-action, could be necessary.

What is the Navigation summary?

The navigation summary report in Google Analytics shows not only how often users entered or left the site on a given page, but also what pages they came from and where they went next.

The navigation summary isn’t easily accessible from the main menu. See below.

Now once on Navigation summary, you can learn a lot more in depth about your website's navigation.

Under "current selection" that is where you can set any page on your site as the middle part of the chain. It starts with the home page or "/" by default.

For this example, the middle page will be set to a jobs/volunteer page. See below.

You'll notice that there were 40 or 62.5% of page views of the home page or "/" (the character after your URL), then those users go to the jobs/volunteer page. The next page those users went to are broken down in the right-hand column. So 9 users or 60% of them went back to the home page after viewing the jobs/volunteer page. You'll notice the page views don't add up to the previous page path. That's because the users not in that next page path left the website at that point.

Learn more

If you'd like to learn more about the information available, here is a link to a webinar I hosted in 2020: WEBINAR: Understanding Google Analytics, website design

Consider text messaging in marketing

Next year, 2022, will be the 30th anniversary of the first short message service, or text message. The date was Dec. 3, 1992. Neil Papworth, from his desktop computer sent a SMS or commonly known as a text message. The message? "Merry Christmas."

Text messaging has come a long way since then. So much so that as 2022 arrives, text messaging can be a key marketing tool as digital marketing, and ways to communicate and engage with consumers continues to evolve.

Statistics have shown that 98% of all text messages are opened, and 95% of SMS messages are opened and responded to within three minutes of being delivered.

When taking those statistics and comparing them to emails, the difference is more than noticeable. Email open rates are, on average, in the neighborhood of 15-25%. And, with the latest changes in privacy and privacy protection, email open rates will be harder to measure.

Here are some other statistics to consider when looking at text messaging in marketing:

• 9 out of 10 consumers would like to communicate with businesses through text message, whether this be through sending alerts, appointment reminders, back and forth communication, etc.
• 48% of customers would like special offers sent to them via text message, and the click-through-rate (CTR) for these sorts of text messages are much higher (19%), compared to other marketing channels such as Email marketing (4%) and Facebook (1%).
• 74% of consumers prefer texting with businesses if a real person is texting back.

In other words, text messaging is worth the effort and investment.

Google confirms local search update

Per BrightLocal.com, Google confirmed its biggest local search algorithm update in five years.

"Many local businesses have noticed huge fluctuations in their local search rankings over the last few weeks, with Google now confirming an important update to the local algorithm," the article says. "Rolling out between (Nov. 30) and (Dec. 8), this update has been named ‘Vicinity’ by Sterling Sky. This is the largest change to the local algorithm since Possum in 2016 and has caused widespread ranking disruption.

"Google confirmed the update in a tweet on December 16th."

Google, via BrightLocal.com, said the update "is named after the fact that it seems to primarily target proximity as a ranking factor.

"Although proximity has long been an important signal for local search results, it’s also been the case that businesses can optimize to successfully rank far from their actual business location. 

"Through the Vicinity update, Google now appears to be clamping down on this, which will naturally make local search results more relevant to the user. In terms of the benefit to businesses, this gives them a greater chance to rank well in relevant local searches, as they’ll be competing less with businesses that are further away."

Read more about this update, which also includes a local pack update, here.

New podcast available: Getting set up for 2022

LISTEN TO NEW PODCAST HERE

It's almost 2022. That means it's time to take a look at what 2022 might have in store for social media marketers.

Among those tips is Sprout Social's recently released guide: "Unlock Social Media Success in 2022." What does it say?

Plus:

• Instagram makes tweak to links within Stories
• Guide to social media holidays
• Tips on social media ROI

How to structure your social media for 2022

Sprout Social has released a guide for marketers to consider heading into 2022: "Unlock Social Media Success in 2022."

It's a free download at https://sproutsocial.com/insights/templates/free-social-media-templates/

One of the guides available is "Find the ideal social media content mix for your brand."

One of the biggest challenges in social media marketing is what content to post. Among the other challenges is when to post and where to post? For the latter two, there's no exact science for it because every industry is different. The goals for each business are different. But one of the easiest ways to understand that is utilizing social listening. That is continuously evaluate what visitors to your social media pages are doing and saying.

Thankfully, there are a handful of analytics tools on each social media platform that helps you put 2 and 2 together.

Content falls into the same idea and thought process. But, that's where Sprout Social's latest report tries to help with that. I'll highlight one of those points.

The top five reasons people visit a business' social media page: to learn about new products/services, to stay up to date on company news, to be entertained, to read other people's reviews/experiences with the brand, and to be inspired.

A separate stat from Sprout Social shows more than 70 percent of consumers will buy from a brand they follow on social media.

It's been said often and it bears repeating: consumers are on social media. You need to be too.

Instagram makes tweak to links within Stories

In October, Instagram announced that that links are now being made available in Instagram Stories for all users, instead of just those accounts with 10k followers or are verified accounts.

Also at that time, it was announced the company was working on a model to be able for users to modify the link sticker. That time has arrived.

Users who use the link click sticker with IG stories can now modify the text for the sticker.

The initial implementation was a huge victory for Instagram business users, especially those with less than 10,000 followers. Up until then, the only clickable link on Instagram was in the profile bio if you had less than 10,000 followers.

As Reels and Stories, as well as overall short-form video continues to grow, creating content for those tools will have a greater emphasis with a greater possibility of generating website leads.

Read more about the initial implementation here: Instagram finally gives website click to all users

Guide to social media holidays

Meltwater.com has released its 2022 Social Media National Celebrations calendar. This is a fun, but also handy calendar if you're coming up short on trying to come up with creative and catchy social media content.

Can also provide you a guide to celebrate a day, week or month that directly corresponds with your business. Thus, it helps expand your brand awareness.

Examples:

• Jan. 29: National Puzzle Day
• Feb. 16: National Almond Day
• March 23: National Puppy Day
• April 10: National Siblings Day
• May 4: Star Wars Day
• June 30: Social Media Day
• July 22: National Hot Dog Day
• Aug. 19: National Photography Day
• Sept. 15: National Online Learning Day
• Oct. 1: International Coffee Day
• Nov. 17: National Hiking Day
• Dec. 5: International Volunteer Day

You can get the interactive calendar by clicking here.

Tips on social media ROI

It's an important question, right? Are we getting enough value on our investment? Was the investment worth it?

In many ways, it's the way to understand the ad spend investment, or key performance indicators (KPIs).

If you're using social media for your digital marketing, there are many ways to analyze your campaigns.

Among those ways was supplied in a nice tip guide by Hootsuite: "How to Measure the ROI of Your Social Media."

Here are some highlights from the guide:

• You can't focus on organic or paid alone.
• Each step in the buyer journey will have different success metrics.
• Use link tracking.

You can download the guide here.

TikTok settles class action lawsuit

TikTok users nationally, and especially in Illinois, can benefit after a $92 million settlement was reached.

According to a website that details the settlement, TikTok was alleged in the complaint "to have violated federal and state law by collecting and using, without sufficient notice and consent, plaintiffs' personal data in connection with their use of the TikTok - Make Your Day video-sharing application (and/or its predecessor app Musical.ly) distributed in the U.S."

TikTok says it denies "these allegations and other material allegations in the operative complaint."

The settlement affects two groups of people: nationwide and the state of Illinois.

Those eligible nationwide are those who used the app before Sept. 30, 2021. For those eligible in Illinois, they must reside in Illinois and used the app in Illinois before Sept. 30, 2021.

Claims can be submitted on one's behalf or of a minor child.

Read more about the settlement and what steps to take by clicking here.

Understanding the digital audience

This is the first time in history, especially in the U.S., where there are four generations of people in the workforce. Simply put: we have a diverse group of people living today and all have different backgrounds and abilities.

Thus, in this digital age, it can be challenging to figure out which one is our target audience.

Recently, Mavrck, an influencer marketing technology company, released "The Influencer Marketing Guide by Demographic." It is a very detailed look at the different demographics that make up the population.

The company, in its introduction of the report, said, "We live in a technology-driven era with overwhelming domestic tech literacy amongst most living generations. But that doesn’t mean one influencer marketing strategy fits all. So many factors contribute to how consumers interact with social media and branded content. It’s impossible to generalize just how any singular consumer may react based on their age. What we can do is understand each generation’s tech literacy level and keep in mind the driving factors that define their lifetimes.

"Our demographic guide helps provide a foundational understanding not only of what formed each generation’s behavior, but what that means for social media and content creators. We’ll look at what each generation often values in a brand and a marketer, as well as the best platforms to reach each one. We’ll talk about opportunities and challenges for each cohort as well as the kind of content that drives engagement."

It is a 12-page report that breaks down the demographic categories such as Gen Z, Gen Y or Millennials, Baby Boomers, etc.

For example, when describing Millennials, the report says, "Millennials (sometimes called "Gen Y") reached adolescence and/or adulthood during the 2000s. They were early adopters on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. Elder and midrange Millennials taught themselves code during the MySpace era, IMed their friends over AOL in high school, saw firsthand the transition from track phone to Razr to iPhone. They’re well acquainted with the changing tides of social media and are now highly adaptable, tech-savvy adults."

Under each demographical category, Mavrck lists key events for that demographic, preferred social networks, top celebrity influencers and more.

The report also details social media platform use (with help from Pew Research). Here are the highlights of that breakdown:

• Most popular social media platform for those 65 and older: Facebook, followed closely by YouTube.
• Most popular platform for those 18-29: Instagram
• Most popular platform for those 30-49: YouTube
• Most popular platform for those 50-64: YouTube

You can download the full 12-page report here.

Predicting 2022 social media behaviors

It's November. Yikes! Where did the year go? In less than two months, we'll be welcoming 2022. With that, a new year of challenges and opportunities.

What will social media marketing look like in 2022? While we don't know the exact answer, it doesn't hurt to make some predictions and Hootsuite recently made its attempt to do so.

Hootsuite has released its "Social Trends 2022" report in an effort to predict 2022 trends on social media. The report (which can be downloaded in its entirety here) had 18,100 respondents with 48 percent of the respondents holding a title of director and above and 52 percent being managers and practitioners covering nine industries. I was one of the participants in the survey. (Here is some more information about the survey)

Hootsuite laid out five key takeaways from the survey's result in its 53-page report:

• Brands finally get community right (with the help of creators).
• Marketers get creative as consumers wise up to ads.
• Social quietly matures out of the marketing department.
• Social becomes the heart of the post-pandemic shopping experience.
• Social marketers save their brands from the customer service apocalypse.

Social media is likely going to continue to play a large role in 2022, much like it has over the last two years during the pandemic.

According to an April 2021 survey by Pew Research, 70 percent of Americans are using social media on a monthly basis. Another study, this one by statista.com, showed that people with a social media account has grown 38.6 percent between 2017 to 2021. That is expected to grow an estimated another 10-15 percent over the next five years

The top-three goals for social in 2022 will be brand awareness, customer acquisitions and driving conversions.

When broken down by company size, companies with less than 100 employees will use social media as a way to increase acquisition of new customers (Learn more about that in a previous blog post about small businesses and digital marketing here). Companies with 100-999 employees will use social media to improve the employee experience, followed by brand recognition and risk mitigation, And, for companies with more than 1,000 employees, social media will be used for brand protection and risk mitigation, followed by improving the employee experience.

The predicted challenges for social media use in digital marketing in 2022 will be consistently producing creative social content, followed by the decline or organic reach and need to increase paid advertising budgets on social, and integrating data and technology to build a unified customer view.

That last point is going to be a challenge overall, not just in social media. It's expected by 2023 that third-party cookies will be gone. In addition, companies such as Google, have already rolled out tools for their customers to opt-out of data tracking. Thus, this will make it harder for marketers to get a clear picture of their consumers' demographics.

Facebook and Instagram remain effective platforms, but, there is concern for how long that'll last. TikTok saw a 700 percent increase in perceived effectiveness. In addition, 36 percent of companies are planning to increase their investment on TikTok, compared to only 13 percent a year ago. Pinterest and Snapchat are also seeing growths as well.

Digital marketing tips for small businesses

It's hard to standout in the digital space. It's so wide and flooded with competition. For small businesses, it's often hard to compete with the big box brands who have had years to develop name notoriety and brand recognition. Not to mention have massive budgets to work with.

The good news is digital marketing can be done for small businesses.

The one thing small businesses have an advantage on over the big box brands is personalization. What customers (current and potential) want these days more than ever is personalization. It is much easier for small businesses to have that person-to-person communication with consumers because small business owners are often embedded in the community. By comparison, big box brands are in the community, but only by location only. Rarely are they involved in the community.

So, how can small businesses compete in the digital space?

Have a quality website

By quality, this means have a professionally looking site, but also a functioning site. Nothing irritates consumers more than having to wait for a slow website to load. Several studies show consumers wait less than a few seconds for a website to load. Anything beyond five or so seconds is a negative customer experience and that's where you first lose consumers.

Once a site is loaded, does it look professional? Social media is a great way to generate leads to a website. But, it's the website that provides validation to a business to a potential customer. Think of it as social media is the front-facing of your house, the website is the living room, with the corresponding rooms of the house being the different sections of your site.

If a site is too complicated to navigate, that's a turn off for consumers. Make what they're looking for easy to find.

A site with all sorts of graphics and moving parts is great and all, but all those elements can hurt website loading speed. In many cases, simplicity is the best way to go because it doesn't hurt website speed nor makes the navigation experience easier and more effective.

Be on social media

Whether you like social media or not, being on social media is a must in today's digital world.

According to an April 2021 survey by Pew Research, 70 percent of Americans are using social media on a monthly basis. Another study, this one by statista.com, showed that people with a social media account has grown 38.6 percent between 2017 to 2021. That is expected to grow an estimated another 10-15 percent over the next five years. (Read more here)

Simply put, consumers are on social media. So should small businesses.

Couple pointers to keep in mind.

• Be active on social media. Post consistently, engage with consumers.
• Find the platform that best fits your target demographic(s). You don't have to be on every social media platform.
• Social media is a fraction of your marketing strategy. Shouldn't be entire strategy.

Be transparent

This is one of the biggest ones in any marketing strategy, let alone a digital one. Be clear and concise in what you're communicating to your present customers and your potential ones. Understand what your customers need from you and what you need from them. Concentrate on not what product/service you're selling, but why.

Author Simon Sinek once said, "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe."

New podcast now available

Facebook announced Nov. 2 it plans get rid of its Face Recognition system and will delete more than a billion users' facial recognition templates. Face recognition is used to analyze the photos and videos users are in on Facebook, such as a profile picture and photos and videos that a user has been tagged in, to make a unique number for a user.

Why the change?

Instagram has rolled out a major change that is a big win for marketers looking to generate website leads from the platform.

Also covered:

• LinkedIn reports record-breaking engagement.
• Latest in email trends; reliance growing.

Download for FREE on Apple, Amazon Radio, iHeart Radio, Spotify, TuneIn Radio and Buzzsprout.

Pictures from Wisconsin Marketing Summit

It was a pleasure to speak as a panelist at the Wisconsin Marketing Summit on Nov. 4 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Milwaukee.

It was a great day of networking and learning.

I shared the stage with:

• Ishita Chakraborty, professor, Quant Marketing, Wisconsin School of Business
• Julia Currie, marketing director, Direct Supply
• Brian Garrigan, vice president, agency and brand sales, Simpli.fi

It was moderated by Kimberly Douglas, sales, strategic planning, iHeartMedia Milwaukee.

Facebook to ditch face recognition system

Facebook announced Nov. 2 it plans get rid of its Face Recognition system and will delete more than a billion users' facial recognition templates.

What is the Face Recognition system?

According to Facebook, face recognition is used to analyze the photos and videos users are in on Facebook, such as a profile picture and photos and videos that a user has been tagged in, to make a unique number for a user, called a template. (Learn more)

Why the change?

Facebook said, "This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history. More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to our Face Recognition setting and are able to be recognized, and its removal will result in the deletion of more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates."

Here is the full statement from Facebook.

This change also happens on the heels of Facebook rebranding its parent corporation to Meta.

What is Meta?

Set to speak at Wisconsin Marketing Summit

On Nov. 2, I will be one of the featured speakers at the Wisconsin Marketing Summit.

I've very honored and excited to be apart of this event. I'm looking forward to it.

Here is the event agenda. 

Here is the event website.

Instagram finally gives website click to all users

For Instagram users, the company's announcement Oct. 27 was a big win, especially for users who oversee business accounts and are trying to generate website leads.

The company announced that that links are now being made available in Instagram Stories for all users, instead of just those accounts with 10k followers or are verified accounts.

Said Instagram, "When we first introduced Stories links, the feature was limited to verified accounts or those with a certain number of followers. We’ve heard from the rest of our community that they also want to share things that matter with their friends and family. Whatever you’re into, from cooking to volunteering or shopping, you now have a space to share in Stories — regardless of your account size.

"We continue to be inspired by the change-makers on our platform and those who want to turn their passion into a living by sharing links. We recently introduced new ways for creators and businesses to reach more fans, engage their community and grow their reach, and we aim to further support them with access to links."

This is a huge victory for Instagram business users, especially those with less than 10,000 followers. Up until this point, the only clickable link on Instagram was in the profile bio.

But as Reels and Stories, as well as overall short-form video continues to grown, creating content for those tools will have a greater emphasis with a greater possibility of generating website leads.

Personally, I've seen it on two of the three business accounts I manage and have already put it to use. And, with any new tool often rolled out, utilize it as an opportunity for growth.

As explained by Instagram, here's how you put a link on your story:

Use the Link sticker to add a link to your Instagram story. When people tap on the sticker, they’ll be redirected.

• Capture or upload content to your story.
• Select the sticker tool from the top navigation bar.
• Tap the “Link” sticker to add your desired link and tap “Done”.
• Place the sticker on your story — like our other stickers — and tap on the sticker to see color variations.

"We’re also working on ways to customize the sticker so it’s clear what someone will see when they tap your link," Instagram said.

Twitter reports increase in monthly users

In its letter to shareholders, Twitter announced growth in revenue and daily active users in its Quarter 3 2021 report, which was released Oct. 26.

In the report (download here), Twitter said its revenue was $1.28 billion in the third quarter, up 37 percent year over year.

As for the the daily active users growth, Twitter reported it reached 211 million in the third quarter, up 13 percent year over year, increasing from 11 percent year over year. The company attributed that to "ongoing product improvements and global conversation around current events."

The company added, "We continued to make progress on our brand and direct response offerings, with updated ad formats, improved targeting, and better measurement. Revenue product improvements, strong sales execution, and a broad increase in advertiser demand contributed to 41 percent year-over-year growth in ad revenue in Q3."

Twitter said it recognizes the platform's use is best-suited to have "real conversations about what's happening - and creators are responsible for starting, influencing, and amplifying a large percentage of those conversations."

To assist in that, the company unveiled Tips, Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces as monetization streams for users and companies.

"We continue to enhance the global conversation on Twitter with live and on-demand video content," Twitter said.

Examples from the third quarter included:

• A multi-year global extension of our existing partnership with Dow Jones Corporation, which includes a renewal of the successful WSJ What’s Now series, as well as new Barrons, Investor’s Business Daily, and MarketWatch content on Twitter.
• A global deal with IMG Fashion Events & Properties, a division of the world’s leading entertainment and events company, covering Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 Fashion Weeks, including livestreams, highlights, and Spaces.
• A deal with Fox Sports to bring the best of college football content to Twitter with real-time highlights, opening drive “live” streams, as well as a fan-powered “Alternate Camera Angle” where fans get to choose how to watch one of the best games of the week.

As for a prediction for the rest of this year and moving into 2022, Twitter said, "We continue to expect total revenue to grow faster than expenses in 2021 (excluding the litigation settlement announced in Q3), and we expect to continue our investment posture as we enter next year. Our 30%+ headcount growth in 2021, with annual merit increases, and other investments we made in 2021, including our new data center, will flow into annual expenses for 2022, likely resulting in a mid-20% increase in total expenses next year prior to hiring any more people or making additional investments during 2022."

LinkedIn reports record-breaking engagement

LinkedIn reported record-breaking engagement in the last quarter, according to Microsoft.

In the report, LinkedIn reported engagement on the platform is up a record-breaking 19 percent. In addition, LinkedIn’s revenue was up 42 percent year-over-year.

Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been owned by Microsoft. And, as of September 2021, LinkedIn reported 774 million registered members from more than 200 countries and territories.

"We’re experiencing a Great Reshuffle across the global labor market as people are rethinking not only where and how they work, but why," the company said. "With more people changing jobs than ever before, we saw record engagement as nearly 800 million members turned to LinkedIn to connect, learn, grow, and get hired."

LinkedIn said confirmed hires on the platform also increased more than 160 percent. In this quarter, the company said, "we launched new ways to help job seekers discover roles that align with how they want to work."

LinkedIn added, "In this rapidly evolving labor market, companies are increasingly turning to LinkedIn Learning to upskill and reskill their employees. We now have more than 15,000 enterprise customers, and we are expanding our opportunity in the creator economy, including offering new ways for LinkedIn Learning instructors to build their audiences and connect with learners live."

Businesses appear to be favoring LinkedIn as a way to reach professionals, as evidenced by the advertising revenue up 61% year over year. The company said this is attributed to "strong advertising demand in our Marketing Solution business."

Latest in email trends; reliance growing

The need to reach customers digitally has drastically increased since the start of the pandemic. Less customers are going out and more are staying in more regularly. One way to reach them right in the palm of their hand for most of them is email.

This past Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone, foot traffic decreased 52.1% compared to 2019 while

online-only shoppers increased by 44%. That is according to the National Retail Federation's "Holiday Shoppers Take Advantage of Early, Thanksgiving Weekend Deals."

Litmus, an email marketing company, has released its latest State of Email report. In the report, it identifies five key shifts marketers need to know:

• Email marketing is increasingly critical to business success.
• Personalization and automation are dire to standing out and scaling.
• Privacy measures are forcing marketers to rethink current strategies.
• Brands are looking to agile marketing to meet their growing email demand.
• Marketing must embrace the state of the world — brand purpose matters.

Litmus also revealed that at least 80% of marketers believe the pandemic had some kind of impact on their email marketing. Also, reliance on email has increased because of more people working remotely or in some kind of hybrid model, a plan that incorporates a mixture of in-office and remote work in an employee's schedule.

Click here for the full report.

A cookieless world. What should I do?

This week, I'm attending (virtually) the Ad World Conference. In short, Ad World is the world's largest online advertising event. I'm excited to participate in it and have signed up for 10 sessions.

The first session I attended was called "Survive the Cookiepocalypse: The Ad Strategy Buying Signals Guide." It was a fantastic session led by Ben Parr, founder of Mashable and Octane AI.

As has been noted several times is third-party cookies will be gone by around the start of 2023. However, customer data privacy has already moved into the market with Apple's latest iOS 15 update. One of those changes is the Mail Privacy Protection tool. The MPP, in short, is an opt-in feature in Apple Mail. If users opt in, when that user is sent an email, their identification data is removed and then the email is then sent on to the user. So, open rates will show emails are opened, but may not be actually opened by the intended user.

It's a dramatic shift in marketing.

Ben did an excellent job of breaking down what we can anticipate as these changes continue to roll out. Among those was breaking down the differences between third-party data, first-party data and zero-party data.

• Third-party data: Data borrowed from third parties and aggregators such as Facebook and Google.
• First-party data: Data you directly track such as Google Analytics, website tracking.
• Zero-party data: Data customers directly volunteer to you such as quizzes and surveys.

Here is a guide Ben provided from his presentation.

Instagram rolling out new analytics features

Instagram is in process of rolling out new features related to its analytics offerings to better help those overseeing business accounts.

Instagram has expanded its post analytics tool, offering a greater depth of data.

"At Instagram, we’re committed to helping creators turn their passion into a living and supporting small businesses," the company said on its website. "As part of our ongoing work to give professionals the tools they need, we are launching new experiences in Instagram Insights that will help creators and businesses learn more about their audience. Today, we’re introducing accounts engaged, engaged audience, reached audience and new transparency for creators who partner with brands."

The announcement was made Oct. 19 and has begun rolling out to users.

One of the enhancement is accounts engaged and engaged audience.

"Accounts engaged highlights the total number of accounts that interacted with your content in a given time period," the company said. "To help professionals better understand who’s engaging with their content, we’re also providing key demographic information including top cities, top countries, top age ranges and gender, as well as a breakdown by followers and non-followers. We will continue to highlight the total number of content interactions received across each content format."

Also changed is increased insight on your reached audience.

"Today, we will begin providing demographic information about your reached audience, including top cities, top countries, top age ranges and gender," the company said. "This information can be found by tapping “accounts reached” in Insights."

New podcast episode now available

The latest Dettmann Media podcast is now available on Buzzsprout, as well as Apple, iHeart Radio, TuneIn Radio, Amazon and Spotify.

At some point within the next two years, third-party cookies will be eliminated. The change is expected to hinder marketing campaigns, specifically understanding metrics such as key performance indicators, or KPIs, and return on investments, or ROIs.

Third-party cookies are tracking mechanisms that help marketers understand a user's profile on a website that's placed by an outside program.

How do we get ready? Start now!

Also in this episode, what are the trends after about one month since Apple's iOS 15 update, which includes the Mail Privacy Protection feature?

1 month in, what is Mail Privacy Protection influence so far?

About a month ago, Apple unveiled its latest iOS 15 update. Among the features in this update was the option for users to utilize Mail Privacy Protection.

In short, Mail Privacy Protection or MPP, will act as a bridge between sender and consumer in email marketing. What MPP will do is it'll open an email sent to the user, remove identifying traits and then move the email onto the consumer. Analytics will show the email was opened, but it may not necessarily have been opened by the user. (Read more about it here)

Litmus, an email marketing company, released some data and finding from about one month into the launch of Apple's iOS 15 update.

A couple of interesting notes:

• Google has surpassed Apple as the most popular email client overall.
• About 6.6% of users have initialized the MPP.
• Mobile is down 12.8% after MPP compared to before.

Read the full report here.

Source: Litmus

Facebook addresses Oct. 4 outage

For several hours Monday, Oct. 4,  Facebook and its affiliates, including Instagram and WhatsApp, went down for several hours.

Facebook has released the following statement regarding what happened:

"To all the people and businesses around the world who depend on us, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage across our platforms.

"We recognize the frustration and business disruption caused by the lack of access to our services and ad tools and the interruption of advertising campaigns. Our engineering teams have been working as hard as they can to restore access. Our services are now back online and we’re actively working to fully return them to regular operations. For information about the outage, see our Facebook Engineering blog.

"Access to our apps and services, including our ads and business interfaces, have now been fully restored. We can also confirm that ads did not deliver during the time the systems were offline, and advertisers were not and will not be billed for ads during the outage. Ads have now resumed delivery and some advertisers may see accelerated delivery as our services recover from the outage. We encourage advertisers to review your bids and budgets to ensure they accurately reflect your marketing goals.

"We understand the impact outages like these have on the millions of businesses that use our services to find and reach customers. We apologize to all those affected, and we’re working to understand more about what happened today so we can continue to make our infrastructure more resilient.

"Moving forward, we’ll continue to provide updates regarding our business tools on our Facebook for Business status page."

Getting ready for change in cookie world

It's inevitable. By about 2023, third-party cookies will be gone, thus hindering marketing campaigns, specifically understanding metrics such as key performance indicators, or KPIs, and return on investments, or ROIs.

Third-party cookies are tracking mechanisms that help marketers understand a user's profile on a website that's placed by an outside program.

I want to emphasize that first-party cookies will still be available to you. For example, a first-party cookie is when a user signs into an ecommerce website, like Amazon or Walmart. The web browser will send a request in a process that provides the highest level of trust that the user is directly interacting with Amazon, Walmart or another ecommerce website.

Here is a deeper explanation by cookiepro.com: "The web browser saves this data file to the user’s computer, under the “amazon.com” domain. If first-party cookies were blocked, a user would have to sign-in every time they visited, and they wouldn’t be able to purchase multiple items while shopping online because the cart would reset after every item that was added."

So how do we prepare for the change?

Well, for one, collect the data you can now by doing an audit. Find out what you can about visitors to your website.

But don't worry if you can't collect all that information. First-party data will still be available, like I mentioned before. A great example of this are lead generation forms, such as email newsletter signups or purchases.

Putting a greater emphasis on customer experience will be big going forward. Create a positive experience so a consumer, in confidence, can provide you the information you'd like to collect to help with your marketing efforts. But also be transparent about it. Tell them why you're doing it and what you plan to do with it.

Another thing to keep in mind, put a great emphasis on engagement, such as cost per clicks or CPCs. That will help you collect first-party data.

Google Analytics, for the most part, won't be harmed in this transition. But if you do cross-tracking tactics, that will go away. What you can do there is making sure you set up quality UTMs (Read more about that here).

Data showing steep decline in young users on Facebook

Source: socialmediatoday.com

The last several weeks have not been good for the social media icon Facebook. This week in particular has been even worse.

In a matter of 24 hours, Facebook experienced a multiple-hours outage for users around the world. Then, a former employee stood in front of Congress and unloaded on her former employers about what they know about algorithms and its influence on young people.

With these revelations, Facebook is in trouble.

Also consider this, overall trust in Facebook had already been declining. In a blog post several weeks ago, I shared that the company's trust among consumers is barely in the top 10 among social media companies. What's slowing the decline for Facebook is Instagram. But look at the popularity of other apps, specifically Facebook. Snapchat and Twitter have also seen changes for the good.

Facebook has got a hole to dig out of.

But, if the outage showed us something, it is how reliant so many people around the world are on the app and the company in general.

Internal Documents Show Facebook Usage Among Young Users is in Steep Decline

Understanding email engagement

With the recent rollout of Apple's iOS 15 update, it'll be harder for marketers, especially those who rely on email analytics, to get an accurate representation of the success or failure of their digital campaigns.

In case you missed it, Apple's latest update features many new tools and modifications. But one feature that garnered the attention of marketers and is seen as controversial is the Mail Privacy Protection tool.

Apple, as well as Google and other companies, have invested in new resources to put the user in more control of their data. For example, one of Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, "prevents senders from learning whether an email has been opened, and hides IP addresses so senders can’t learn a user’s location or use it to build a profile on them." (You can read more about it here)

In short, the data in email marketing will be clouded, meaning not 100 percent accurate. Therefore, it makes decision making difficult about how to adapt to the changes.

Litmus, an email marketing specialist, recently released a report called "2021 State of Email Engagement Report."

The purpose of the report is to provide a benchmark based on billions of email opens as well as offer insight about how people interacted with email this year. It's a great resource to explore as we prepare for a clouded data future regarding emails and email marketing.

You can download the full report here.

But here were some of the highlights in the report:

• Users using Apple iPhone and Apple Mail account for 51.6% of the email opens. Including Apple iPad adds 1.4% to equal 53%.
• Mobile devices account for more than 42% of email opens. Desktops account for 16%.
• Gmail is, by far, the most popular webmail client at 85%.
• More than 90% of people use Apple iPhone as an email mobile client.
• 9 a.m.-noon, in the U.S., is when the majority of emails are opened (21.2%).
• The average time spent to read an email is 10 seconds, that's down from 13 seconds in 2018.

Apple's iOS 15 update is now available; what does that mean?

We've known for several weeks that Apple was going to release its latest update, iOS 15. In a blog posted Sept. 20, Apple announced the availability of the update.

According to Apple, "iOS 15 introduces new ways to stay connected, powerful updates that help users focus and explore, and intelligent features to get more done with iPhone. FaceTime updates provide more natural video calls, Focus helps users reduce distraction, new features like Live Text use on-device intelligence to surface useful information, upgrades to Maps provide brand new ways to navigate the world, and much more. iOS 15 is available today as a free software update."

Click here for the full blog post.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Improved FaceTime calls
• Improved messaging features
• Improved notifications
• Redesigned browsing on Safari
• Enhanced Apple Maps tools 

The one new feature in this update that's garnered the most attention, at least from a marketing standpoint, is the updated privacy tools and features.

Apple, as well as Google and other companies, have invested in new resources to put the user in more control of their data. For example, one of Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, "prevents senders from learning whether an email has been opened, and hides IP addresses so senders can’t learn a user’s location or use it to build a profile on them."

Another privacy enhancement is with Siri. From Apple, "Siri’s protection of user privacy goes even further with on-device speech recognition as users’ audio requests are now processed entirely on device by default, enabling more personalization, offline requests, and faster performance."

To help better understand what this update means and how marketers will need to adapt, check out my blog post, Apple Mail changes coming; how marketers should prepare.

Here are more quality resources to help with your transition

Facebook Outlines Impacts of Apple's Data Tracking Update, Provides Tips on How Brands Can Improve Ad Performance

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Is Here: What It Actually Means for Email Marketers and What to Do Now

Instagram and nonprofits

Instagram provides users and businesses to take advantage of their creativity in both video and pictures or graphics.

Sure, that sounds like Facebook and other social media sites. But what separates Instagram from Facebook (despite that Facebook owns Instagram), is Instagram often sees higher engagement rates than like posts on Facebook.

In addition, according to Hootsuite, 81 percent of people who use Instagram do so to research products and services.

Recently, I came across a blog that goes over how to utilize Instagram to your advantage in the nonprofit sector. It was a very quality read.

Click here to read the article.

Hootsuite has also provided templates for IG Story covers. You can download those here.

Agenda revealed for Wisconsin Marketing Summit

In November, I have the honor of being a guest speaker at the Wisconsin Marketing Summit in Milwaukee.

The Annual Wisconsin Marketing Summit is an opportunity for 200 brands based across the state to join expert creatives, agencies and marketing directors to exchange ideas across digital, experiential, print and brand marketing.

Join five panel discussions and two presentations in person to review best practices, hear from emerging leaders, and established giants in the region and come away with solutions, ideas, and contacts. 

The panel I'm on will talk about technology and insights. The timing is perfect given the latest shifts and changes regarding user data privacy and third-party cookies.

Learn more or register here: ICSMAX Wisconsin | ICSMAX (icsummitsmax.com)

Here is the event agenda.

Apple Mail changes coming; how marketers should prepare

Today, I sat in on a very informative and important webinar hosted by Litmus, an email marketing company. It was called "The State of Email Analytics and Privacy."

It has been stated often this year by not just myself, but many within the social media, digital and email marketing industry: privacy and transparency is growing in demand among consumers.

One action that is coming up soon is Apple's Mail Privacy Protection tool. It is believed to come out some time this fall, potentially as soon as September.

“Privacy has been central to our work at Apple from the very beginning,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, in a press release. “Every year, we push ourselves to develop new technology to help users take more control of their data and make informed decisions about whom they share it with. This year’s updates include innovative features that give users deeper insights and more granular control than ever before.”

What is Apple's Mail Privacy Protection?

According to its website, Mail Privacy Protection stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about a user. The feature helps users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email, and masks their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.

How it'll work is users who opt-in to this offering will receive an email from you. When they do, their information will go into a proxy server that will cloud that information and make it invisible. After process is done, the analytics will then be sent to you. It essentially will erase open rate and the IP address to prevent you from knowing where the person opened the email.

Read Apple's press release here.

What's the big deal?

From the consumer standpoint, it offers them the opportunity to be in more control of how their data and activity is tracked and stored. Supporters of this argue people who have access to this data are perceived as spying.

From the marketing standpoint, it offers them the opportunity to better understand their audiences and deliver more personalized experiences. Thus, reducing unwanted ads, emails, etc., and that's the key point made by those who support this stance. By eliminating that information, there is concern users will be more upset to receive emails or marketing messages that don't pertain or have little to no interest to them.

It's a fair argument on both sides. And that's why it is interesting and complicating at the same time.

Something else to keep in mind. Litmus estimated that about 50 percent of people who opened an email within the last year did so through Apple Mail. Yikes!

How do marketers adjust?

There are a lot of ways to do that. But simply: you're going to have to adjust and rethink important metrics, consider metrics that you weren't before.

The Mail Privacy Protection tool will essentially make email open rates irrelevant and highly inaccurate. For a while, that was maybe the No. 1 metric to understand an email's success. Was it opened by the people you sent it to? It makes the most sense to measure your ROI for your email marketing on that.

Another important metric that is often used is utilizing send-time optimization. That metric will now be rendered useless and inaccurate.

One of the immediate steps to take is to do an audit of your email audience. Figure out who uses Apple Mail. Then figure out who doesn't. Creating new audience segments will be helpful too. Separating the Apple users from others will give you comparable data. In my experience, if one group shows data, the comparable data is too far off. It may not be exact, but it can give you an estimate.

Other steps to take:

• Re-evaluate how you measure engagement in emails. Suggestions include conversion rate (how many people receive an email and how many conversions you have), mailing list growth or decline, or click rate within the email.
• Put a stronger emphasis on smart, catchy subject lines and preview text.
• Put a stronger emphasis on overall engagement within an email, again, such as clicks on link(s).
• Create a poll and simply ask your audience: What do you want to receive? How often?

Here are several links to great resources that'll help you adjust:

• How Apple’s Mail Privacy Changes Impact Email Marketing by Constant Contact
• 14 ways email marketers should adapt to Apple's Mail Privacy Protection by Oracle
• The Mail Privacy Protection Survival Guide for Marketers by Litmus
• What will be your average open rate after Mail Privacy Protection? by Litmus

Understanding the value of UTM in marketing

Technology, privacy and transparency, as we know, continues to evolve. It leaves marketers regularly looking for ways to understand how their campaigns are performing.

Say hello to UTM, or Urchin Tracking Module.

UTM has five variants of URL parameters used by marketers to track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media. When used correctly, it can be a very powerful marketing analysis tool.

The parameters are source, medium, name, term and content.

Here is an example of a new with a UTM applied:

 https://www.westbendtheatreco.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=ourtown

As you can see with this setup, the UTM source was set as "Facebook" with the medium being "link" and campaign being "Our Town."

This data will provide you terrific insight onto where your users are coming from (source), what they're clicking on (link) and, in this case, what post led them to the page (campaign).

All this can be tracked within Google Analytics.

Also, it is recommended you use URL shortening tools like Bit.ly or Rebrandly to make the URL more appealing.

I like Rebrandly because you can change the URL after the "/" to whatever you want it, to make it more personable and realistic.

Here are a few great resources to help you with understanding and setting up your own UTMs:

• Campaign URL Builder
• What Are UTM Codes? UTM Tracking Explained
• Collect campaign data with custom URLs

Then, how do you find the results in Google Analytics?

You log in to your Google Analytics and click on "Acquisition," then "Campaigns".

Then use primary dimension as "Campaign" and look for what you labeled the UTM under category.

Or, you can find it via "Medium."

Intuit to acquire Mailchimp

Intuit, a global technology platform that makes TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, and Credit Karma, announced Monday, Sept. 13, it has acquired Mailchimp, a global customer engagement and e-mail marketing platform for about $12 billion.

"Since day one, setting our customers up for success has been our top priority, and we’re confident that our acquisition by Intuit will advance that mission and secure the legacy of support for small businesses that we’ve built over the last 20 years," wrote Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp co-founder and CEO, in an email. "Like Mailchimp, understanding small businesses is embedded in Intuit’s DNA, which affirms my belief that this is the right next step for Mailchimp, our employees, and importantly, our customers."

According to the press release, the transaction is expected to close prior to the end of Intuit’s second quarter fiscal 2022.

"Together, Intuit and Mailchimp will work to deliver on the vision of an innovative, end-to-end customer growth platform for small and mid-market businesses, allowing them to get their business online, market their business, manage customer relationships, benefit from insights and analytics, get paid, access capital, pay employees, optimize cash flow, be organized and stay compliant, with experts at their fingertips," the release says. "Delivering on the promise to be the single source of truth, small and mid-market businesses will have the power to combine their customer data from Mailchimp and QuickBooks’ purchase data to get the actionable insights they need to grow and run their businesses with confidence."

Read the full press release here.